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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26251540">moments fading fast</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanzentai/pseuds/kanzentai'>kanzentai</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 03:01:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,844</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26251540</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kanzentai/pseuds/kanzentai</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Felix finds an odd notebook, and rather than returning it to its owner, holds on.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>94</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Felannie Mini Bang 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>moments fading fast</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>here's my piece for the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/felannieminibang2020?src=hashtag_click&amp;f=live">felannie mini bang</a> hosted by <a href="https://twitter.com/crumbsandyums">crumbsandyums</a>! </p><p>i collabed with the amazing <a href="https://twitter.com/zeeohyi">zoe</a>, whose stunning art is embedded in the fic below. she really did the most, having drawn three — THREE! — beautiful pieces, while also putting up with my constant procrastination all these months. i'm so grateful to have had such a lovely partner! ;u;</p><p>title from thirdstory's <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/65j4tmIraduYx8J0AqlQ0A?si=Y9q2cX5SR2eLbBoki1iTtg">on and on</a>. as always, thanks for looking this over, <a href="https://twitter.com/axedeoexmachina">cyan</a>! &lt;333</p><p>while this fic is mostly fluff, <b>additional warnings</b> for a brief panic attack mentioned near the end.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"Where <em>is</em> it," Felix groans, sticking his hand deep into a cupboard. He pushes the hanging winter cloaks to a side, pats around the bottom shelf, but doesn't find what he's looking for. As he retracts his hand from a silverfish, a hideous blue cape slips out from a rack and lands on his face, and he groans again.<em> Great</em>. There’s a war going on, all his friends are probably dead, and Felix is breathing in dust formed before he was born.</p><p>Closing the cupboard, he looks around his room, trying to remember where he'd left that damned thing. It's been years since he last used it, seeing how there was no use for a small weapon like that when all his battles since Garreg Mach have been against more than mere bandits. </p><p>It's been years since he last used it, but he needs it once more, now, because he's going back. He's going back to Garreg Mach.</p><p>He finds his satchel from the academy in one of the iron trunks in his room. He tugs at its strap, and groans yet again when it snaps in two, then pulls the whole bag out unceremoniously. Almost immediately, the toothed dagger Felix had been looking for all morning slides out from it and stabs the single boot that had also fallen out from the trunk with his satchel. </p><p>Rather than feeling grateful that his foot was two centimeters away from the dagger's trajectory, Felix whistles in appreciation at the blade’s sharpness despite all these years of unuse; this really was the right choice for his journey. But it's as he's leaning to extract it from the boot that something else tumbles out of his satchel, and the sight of it wipes the smirk off his face.</p><p>He stares at the leather bound notebook and the edges of its brown cover curling upwards, and almost hears it laughing back up at him. In Annette Fantine Dominic's voice.</p><p><br/>
</p><p>♪</p><p><br/>
</p><p>Felix crosses his legs, then uncrosses them. He clenches his fists, clicks his tongue for the seventh time, and crosses his legs again. The notebook is still on the floor between his bed and the dusty trunk that housed this book during these five years he’s been battling the Empire, and Felix makes no effort to pick it up.</p><p>The mere sight of it is enough to bring to Felix's memory that time he fought those bandits looting villages on the outskirts of Fraldarius territory. There should have been a number of things going through his mind as he struck down his opponents— like their skill, or their techniques, or even how he had bigger battles to fight. Instead, all Felix had thought about then were how the swamps they had to cross to reach that particular village might have had... beasties. Swamp beasties.</p><p>Another minute passes in silence, and flicking away the silverfish that had somehow made its way to his glove, Felix reaches for the book.</p><p>The closer he gets to it, however, the louder he can hear Annette's voice in his head. <em>Steaks and cakes. Crumbs and yums. Treats that I long to eats.</em></p><p>He stops midway, draws his hand back, and grabs the fabric over his chest as he glares down at the book, willing his heart to stop beating so hard. </p><p><br/>
</p><p>♪</p><p><br/>
</p><p>He still brings it with him as he travels back to the monastery. Trust Felix to leave his best blades aside but carry with him something that doesn’t provide a single ounce of defense, in the middle of a war, simply because he can’t get Annette’s voice out of his head. It’s been years since he last saw Annette, much less heard her sing, but the mere memory of swamp beasties on finding her book had brought her songs back to his mind, as if he’d just listened to her humming about them the previous day.</p><p><em>I’m only going to return it to her</em>, he tells himself, hand resting on his traveling bag when he breaks for the night. <em>I won’t look at it. I won’t even open it.</em></p><p>He opens it when he's a day's journey away from the monastery. Night has fallen and it's too dark to see his own feet, but the fire he sets up ensures he won't die of hypothermia, and when he shifts closer to it, he notices the little drawing on the corner of the book; smiles. With his sword on his other side, he doesn't bother setting up any traps around him despite how dangerous these roads are these days. After all, he isn't going to be falling asleep tonight— not when he has this book in his hands.</p><p>
  <a href="https://twitter.com/zeeohyi"></a>
</p><p><br/>
</p><p>♪</p><p><br/>
</p><p>The first time he sees the book is when he returns to the classroom to fetch his training sword. It's on the floor by his desk, only a few feet away from where he usually sits. Staring at it suspiciously, he leans forward to grab his blade from his desk, then takes a step back.</p><p>He looks around to make sure he's alone, and only then nudges the book with the tip of his sword. The last time he picked up a book he found lying face-down, Ashe had materialized behind him, misunderstood the whole situation as he peeked at the cover, and gushed about the fictional contents of the book Felix had just wanted to set aside so he wouldn't trip over it in the hallway.</p><p>This book, however, doesn't look like it has anything to do with knights, nor does it look like a novel. It’s a simple notebook, and it has no name on the cover, only a little scribble on the top right corner that looks like a... cake. The kind they serve in the dining hall every Friday evening.</p><p>"Hmm," Felix muses once he glances around the classroom once again. There isn't anyone — especially Ashe — around, so he bends, picks the book up and brings it close, then feels an odd satisfaction on being right about the cake.</p><p>There's a small <em>yum</em> inscribed next to the cake with a little line connecting the two, almost as if it's the cake speaking, and Felix hums again at this interesting concept. A cake that seems to say <em>yum</em>, which is a property it shouldn't know, since only those who have tasted it can deem it to be delicious or not. <em>Interesting.</em></p><p>He flips the book over to see if there's any other indication of who this might belong to, but finds none. There isn't any marking on the sides similar to how Ingrid keeps track of her periodicals, nor any wear on the bottom edges from being shoved into tiny spaces by Sylvain, nor does it have any big dents in the middle like most of Dimitri's textbooks do. Felix stares at the leatherbound book for an entire minute, but he can't figure out who it might belong to.</p><p>All this time he's spending here with a book in his hand is less time he can spend outside training, but now that he's gone out of his way to pick it up, he decides to see it through to the end and return this to its rightful owner.</p><p>"Who left you here?" he asks the drawing of the speaking cake, then shakes his head and opens the book when it, predictably, doesn't answer.</p><p>The first page is blank. That means it can't belong to Dedue, who always writes his name down on the top right corner at the start of his notebooks, as Felix had come to realize after a few days of sharing the same table in Shamir's lectures. He gets to the second page, and now he's completely sure that this belongs to neither Mercedes nor Ashe, but Annette. No one else would draw a giant hideous creature that looks like it could make the Black Eagles' Bernadetta cry, and write the words <em>Turn Back Lest You Be Bitten By The Swamp Beasties</em> under it.</p><p>Chuckling, Felix places his training sword back where he found it, then leans back, sits at the edge of his desk. He knows he shouldn't read through others' notebooks, especially if they have curses about swamp beasties biting their readers attached right at the beginning, but there's no way he can turn back now. Annette already thinks he's a villain for having completely valid questions about mountains comprised of steaks and cakes, so it wouldn't hurt to go a step ahead and complete the image by doing something truly villainous. Like reading through one of her notebooks.</p><p>If the previous page wasn't enough evidence that this book has nothing to do with their academics, the one that comes after sure is. Felix sees the lyrics of the first song he heard her sing in the greenhouse — the one about her wanting to fill her tummy tummy tum — and doodles of cakes stacked upon each other beside the words. Under it are lines that have been cancelled out with dark lines, but he can tell they were all prospective lyrics that didn't make the cut.</p><p>The next page has even more rhymes about food, savoury in nature this time. Some lines that seem to be her favourites — like the ones about kitten whiskers — have stars littered all around them, and for the lyrics that transcend even that: hearts. Everything about the drawings and carefully underlined titles of the songs screams <em>Annette</em>, even though there's no mention of her name in the book at all.</p><p>With a snort of laughter at her attempt at replicating a Fódlandy next to a bunch of lyrics that rhyme perfectly with each other, Felix props himself up on the desk, lets his legs dangle in the air as he flips the page. This one has even more incomprehensible lines, cancelled out and scribbled over all the way till the bottom where the word <em>bread </em>has been circled so aggressively that the ink has seeped through all the way to the next page.</p><p>After that comes a list of ingredients required to make sorbet, and a number of arrows connecting each item to a word that sounded similar but not quite. There's no way Felix would ever associate peaches with leeches, after all, but Annette isn't Felix, so she sure has. <em>As interesting as always</em>, Felix finds himself thinking, all his previous concern regarding spending his training time in here thrown out the door.</p><p>He's already fifteen pages and eleven songs in when he hears footsteps approaching the classroom, soft and hurried, almost like someone who has realized that they're missing something — which may or may not be a book containing lyrics of self-composed songs — is on their way back to find it.</p><p>"Felix?" Annette says, taking a step back when she enters the classroom, her eyes wide. "What... are you doing here?"</p><p>"Nothing," Felix says, leaning against his desk after pushing himself off of it, grabbing his sword, and hiding her book behind his back. "Came to get my sword. What are <em>you</em> doing here?"</p><p>"Nothing," Annette replies, trying to sound casual as she steps forward, eyes roaming all over the floor. "Say, you wouldn't have happened to come across a book over here, right?"</p><p>Felix tightens his grip on her book, but shrugs instead of telling her the truth. "What sort of book?"</p><p>At this, Annette stiffens in the middle of checking under Mercedes's desk, and her smile falters. Felix should be feeling more guilty about this, but since this isn't a personal diary that's too private for him to even glimpse at, it’s probably fine. Plus, the way she straightens up and beams at him, trying to show him that everything's alright, is really as interesting as everything else she does. No wonder Felix zones out during Byleth's seminars to think about Annette’s unique songs and distinctive footwork. No one else dances quite like she does, especially while singing about rabbit holes and tea parties.</p><p>"It's just... a notebook, you know?" Annette says, moving her hands to make a square the approximate size of the book. "The normal kind. With no weird words or drawings drawn inside it. Because it's a completely normal book."</p><p>"A completely normal book," Felix repeats, walking towards the door, his back hidden from Annette's view. "With no weird words or drawings drawn inside it."</p><p>"Absolutely zero rhymes and doodles." Annette's voice is a pitch higher than usual. Felix feels like he should just confess what he knows and hand the book to her, but the memories of her running off while calling him a villain are still rather fresh in his mind, and he'd rather not have another one of the same quality added there.</p><p>"Haven't seen it," he says, lips quirking upwards when she sighs, relieved that Felix didn't catch on. Honestly, Felix never tires of seeing her expressions, and that's... odd, because he often feels like his life would be a hundred times better if he could just not associate with most of the people who frolic around him.</p><p>Annette hums slightly, moving over to check under the next desk, until she suddenly straightens up again, hitting her knee on the corner of a bench in the process. Felix jolts as she winces, but doesn't get to say anything before Annette, while holding her kneecap, gushes, "If you <em>do</em> come across it, though, just.. do <em>not</em> open it. Alright?"</p><p><em>Lest You Be Bitten By The Swamp Beasties</em>, Felix thinks. Annette doesn't notice the soft laugh that escapes him, too preoccupied by her knee. It doesn't look like it warrants any medical aid, so Felix simply steps backwards until he's at the door. With a soft <em>alright</em>, he leaves the classroom, but instead of heading to the training grounds like he'd intended, he twirls his sword in a hand, then brings out the book from behind him to survey its cover again, and walks back to the dormitories.</p><p><br/>
</p><p>♪</p><p><br/>
</p><p>By the time his lamp runs out of oil, he's almost entirely through her book, and his mind feels like it's floating in a river that smells like sweet buns. If this is how Annette feels all the time, it's no surprise she sings to flowers and dances to tunes about, as one of the latter pages states, <em>master seals and otters</em>.</p><p>Since it's only a few minutes until dawn when he closes her book, he decides to forgo sleeping entirely, and heads to the training ground with both his sword and the determination to figure out just how the genetically modified swamp beasties that appeared on the book’s fifty-seventh page could be defeated. Clearly not with bourgeois pike, as Annette seems to think, if their reappearance on page seventy-two was anything to go by.</p><p>"Oh, Felix. Here to train?" Byleth asks, creeping out from the shadows of the training hall with a light purple veil in his hands.</p><p>"No, I'm here to figure out how bourgeois pike is made," Felix snaps, eyes stinging when the morning sunlight glints on Byleth's armour. "Of course I'm here to train."</p><p>"Nice to see you being so diligent this early," Byleth says, smiling, unaware of how Felix actually spent his night. He's been showing a lot more emotion ever since one of their recent missions, and while it should be odd, seeing him change so much, Felix doesn't think it's half bad.</p><p>As if he's remembered something, Byleth gasps a soft <em>oh</em>, then holds the purple veil out to him. "Is this yours, by any chance?"</p><p>"I know nothing about it," Felix says, eyeing the veil. "Ask some—"</p><p>"How about this?" Byleth cuts in, taking something out of his pocket that Felix recognizes all too well.</p><p>Glancing down at the empty slot of his belt where he usually slots his smaller weapons, then back up at the toothed dagger Byleth holds out, Felix takes it from him, saying, "That's mine. Thank you for finding it."</p><p>Byleth smiles and pumps his fist, but doesn't do a very good job of hiding it from Felix. This isn't the first time Felix has seen him return something to someone, but he still doesn't understand why it makes him so happy, as if he’s gaining points for doing it or something. "Hey, Professor. Would you have some time?"</p><p>"To spar?" Byleth hums, draping the purple veil over an arm and taking his folded schedule from another pocket. "Sorry, I need to head to the cathedral for—"</p><p>"No," Felix says, narrowing his eyes at the logbook that peeks out of another one of Byleth's pockets. It looks a lot like the one Dimitri carries with him to the training grounds everyday, and when it slips out further to reveal a big dent in the middle, Felix knows it <em>is</em> his. "It's about something else. About..." Felix trails off, then brings up the dagger Byleth had just handed to him. "About lost items."</p><p>Byleth seems taken aback at this, not used to Felix speaking to him about anything but training. He recovers pretty quickly, tucks Dimitri's training logbook back into his pocket with his schedule, and waits for Felix to go on.</p><p>Awkwardly, Felix scratches the back of his neck as he tries to come up with the right words. "You go around returning stuff to people, right?"</p><p>"I do," Byleth replies with a nod.</p><p>Felix wishes Byleth would be at least half as chatty as Sylvain and the others so he wouldn't have to do all the speaking, but since he isn't, Felix sighs, then says, "Don't you ever get misunderstood?"</p><p>Byleth hums, cupping his chin with a hand. A sudden gust of wind makes the veil on his arm flutter behind him, but it doesn't distract Byleth. "As in, do people think I'm not returning these items, but that I stole them in the first place?"</p><p>"You're quick to catch on," Felix says, holding back a comment about Byleth's past as a mercenary aiding his sharpness, since he isn't as much of one as he seemed to be some months ago. "Did that ever happen to you?"</p><p>"Not at all," Byleth says, then looks contemplative again. "Well, not... yet, at least. Why? Did someone suspect you—"</p><p>"Nobody has suspected me," Felix interrupts, voice tighter than usual. "Because I haven't done anything to suspect."</p><p>Byleth stares at him like he doesn't believe him, but when the Tournament Organizer coughs outside the door, he looks down at his pocket-watch and says, "Sorry, Felix. Let's talk about this later, if you don't mind?"</p><p>"No need," Felix calls out to Byleth, who's already walking towards the door. "Just train with me sometime."</p><p>"Only if you pay attention to my seminar next Saturday."</p><p>He's out the door before Felix can respond, and when he's sure that he's alone, Felix reaches behind him. He deftly takes Annette's lyrics book out from under his vest, then opens it up to the page that has an extensive list of words that rhymed with steaks and cakes, including but not limited to rakes, fakes, lakes, and makes. Then, he glances down at the toothed dagger Byleth had handed him a few minutes ago.</p><p>Felix has to return this book to her. Despite how evil Annette thinks he might be, he wouldn't really do something that would make her upset. Which, well, he's sort of messed up a little by not only <em>not</em> handing her book to her right away, but also going through its contents. Maybe she won’t get so mad if he tells her that this was an elaborate ploy to make her add <em>takes</em> to this list. Or maybe she will.</p><p>
  <a href="https://twitter.com/zeeohyi"></a>
</p><p>Sighing, Felix hides her book again. If he returns her lost book to her now, she's going to call him a supervillain or a megavillain or whatever she settles on once she fixes page one hundred and twelve, after which she might never speak to him again. But if he continues to hold on to the book until he completes reading it, well... who knows? He might just get bitten by a swamp beastie. A genetically modified one, at that.</p><p><br/>
</p><p>♪</p><p><br/>
</p><p>He finds Annette making her way through her third sorbet for the evening. Well, it could be her first, and it’s possible it was someone else who didn't clear the other two empty dishes on the table, but that's unlikely, seeing how no one can get too close to Annette right now. Not when she's radiating a murderous aura that's immensely different from her usual sunshine and magical self.</p><p>"What's wrong?" Felix asks, pulling back the chair next to her. "Did you fail a certification again?"</p><p>Annette whips her head toward Felix, eyes blazing, but she seems to relax on realizing it's <em>him</em>. Felix doesn't acknowledge the way his heart skips a beat at this, simply places an elbow on the table and cups his face.</p><p>"I passed it." She stabs the sorbet with her spoon, then sighs. "With the highest grade, too."</p><p>"Hm," Felix says by way of congratulations. Then, he watches her frown at her sorbet. "Is this about the book?"</p><p>Annette chokes on the spoonful of sorbet she'd shoved into her mouth only a moment prior, then pretends like she's perfectly alright when she turns to him again. "Did you see it?"</p><p>"I didn't," Felix says, but misses the right moment to say <em>because I think I </em>stole<em> it</em>. Annette looks disappointed, then murderous again. A moment later, she settles back into a state of perplexity, and Felix stifles a laugh behind his palm. He really can't tire of watching this girl.</p><p>"Mercie was right," Annette groans, pushing her empty sorbet away from her. "It must have fallen from my satchel during sky watch... and now it's in a parallel universe..."</p><p>The thought of a leatherbound book just falling off a pegasus and into a different dimension sounds like something that would feature in one of Annette's songs, and as delightful as that sounds, Felix doesn't dwell on the specifics when Annette pushes herself up.</p><p>"Where are you going?" he asks, sitting up straighter, readying himself to confess about the theft and get slapped across the face or whatever it is that the girls Sylvain ticks off do to him. "Hey, Annette, it wasn't the pegasus, but—"</p><p>"—the wyvern," Annette interrupts. If she had said this last week, Felix would have only blinked at her in confusion. However, now that he's well acquainted with the fictional feud between a particular pegasus and wyvern spread across four entire pages of her notebook, all in metered rhyme, he does his best to hold himself back from asking for clarification regarding the cause of their feud.</p><p>"Right," Felix says, crossing his arms over his chest. "Are you going to get another sorbet?"</p><p>"Maybe," Annette replies, taking a tentative step towards the counter before turning around, eyes narrowed. "Wait, why are you here right now? Are the training grounds closed?" </p><p>Annette stares at Felix with suspicion, and although it isn't in the context of her notebook, Felix feels a tad guilty anyway. Even he doesn't know why he's here instead of the training grounds, so he doesn't answer, just watches her shrug and skip away, humming about the feud between a particular pegasus and wyvern, and his heart feels all sorts of weird.</p><p><br/>
</p><p>♪</p><p><br/>
</p><p>Weeks of continuous certification exams later, Felix transitions into a better swordsman, but also a better conspiracy theorist. There's something about reading through random pages of Annette's notebook in the middle of revising that makes one see a whole new world. Each eccentric phrase and bizarre annotation leaves Felix with more questions, and after two unsatisfactory replies to the notes he dropped in the cathedral's advice box, he knows he won't get any answers unless he asks Annette directly.</p><p>Of course, there's the issue of how he first needs to confess that he's the abyss she suspects has swallowed up her notebook, and also that he's a <em>literate</em> abyss who has read through her notebook despite her warning about the swamp beasties. While she seems to have mostly recovered from the loss of her book now — sticking to having only one plate of saghert and cream after dinner, as opposed to the previous three — Felix isn't sure if she'd take too kindly to the revelation of his actions. She never fails to tell him how evil he is for praising her footwork, after all.</p><p>Sighing at the sheathed sword Byleth had given him after a recent mission, Felix walks into the library. There are a hundred and one things he should be preoccupied by, seeing how the boar's gradually losing his mind and there have been a couple of disappearances and reappearances in the monastery, but he keeps thinking about Annette's songs instead— the ones he'd heard her sing, and also the ones he'd only read, but can imagine how they sound so clearly that it's a surprise even to him.</p><p>The library seems empty, as is the norm after a week of examinations, and he places his sword on an empty table as he heads to the geography shelves. He'd hoped to find some more information about these milky rivers Annette keeps referencing in her songs, but since his life is as ridiculous as that scribbled cake which says <em>yum</em>, he stumbles upon Annette herself, who's humming a tune that's much too familiar for Felix to ignore.</p><p>"This mountain of sweets, and treats that I long to eats," Annette sings, twirling a quill as she switches to a different pitch. "Oh, stacks of steaks and cakes and crumbs and yums—"</p><p>She cuts herself off, and Felix watches her shake her head, then resume: "Oh, piles of bakes and cakes and lumps and—" The quill gets another twirl, and so does her entire body as she carries out a rather complex dance that Felix hadn't even seen the winner of the White Heron Cup perform. "Oh, heaps of lakes and cakes and scraps and— and—"</p><p>"Traps?" Felix tries, stepping towards her as he recalls the multiple rhymes she'd jotted down in her notebook. "Since you brought up lakes, which suggests you might want to set up a lure with dessert, so you could capture some prey for a meal. For a spicy fish and turnip stew, perhaps?"</p><p>Annette doesn't reply, and when Felix looks closely, she... doesn't look like she's breathing either. Felix waves a hand, then snaps his fingers in front of her face. "Hey, are you alright—"</p><p>"Felix... you... <em>ultravillain</em>!" she <em>shouts</em>, completely disregarding the one rule of a library that even Felix doesn't have the will to break. "I knew it. You've been mocking me all along, huh? God, and it's this song again... It <em>attracts</em> evil..."</p><p>"The—" Felix blinks at her. "What? I just wanted to help—"</p><p>He doesn't get to finish, because Annette dashes out of the library before he can even take her name. Staring at the space where she'd been only a few moments ago, Felix sighs. Well, at least he knows what prefix for <em>villain</em> she settled on.</p><p><br/>
</p><p>♪</p><p><br/>
</p><p>She doesn't speak to him for an entire week, and it gets increasingly difficult for him to return her book to her every time she ignores him and clumsily walks into something else.</p><p>He considers leaving it on her desk after classes, but with even more tests and missions coming up, the place never seems to be empty anymore. The thought of simply placing it outside her room occurs to him as well, but it's a risk, seeing how someone else could pick it up, and he knows she'd combust on the spot if she catches him holding on to it outside her door.</p><p>So he keeps her book hidden under a couple of his own texts, out of all his visitors' sight but still within his reach. While he feels a twinge of guilt whenever he looks at it, there's also a gentle buzz in his head that makes him smile down at it fondly, and if Felix wasn't so determined to return it to her sometime, he'd have to carry out a lot of introspection for harbouring such strange feelings towards an inanimate object that mentioned swamp beasties so many times.</p><p><br/>
</p><p>♪</p><p><br/>
</p><p>But over time, with every new odd happening in the monastery, the frequency of Felix flipping through her lyrics and imagining how they'd sound in her bright, captivating voice goes down. He still stifles a laugh when his mind supplies him with the image of giant steaks when Byleth talks about the next mission's stakes being high, and forces his expression into impassivity when Claude complains about Seteth disposing books that he deemed suggestive or inappropriate, and Annette gasps just a bit on hearing that.</p><p>It gets increasingly difficult for him to return her book to her, but he begins to understand just <em>why</em> when he hears her sing to a flowerbed in the greenhouse, watches her dance with the children in the marketplace, and learns more about magic from her in one group study session than he'd gleaned in an entire semester.</p><p>Felix likes Annette a lot more than he lets on, and even though she puffs her cheeks out and stomps away when he genuinely tries to offer his advice on what the pegasus and wyvern should do after they part ways in one of her songs, he knows she doesn't truly hate him, no matter how much she insists on it.</p><p>"Just takes a flash of light and then it all goes boom," he reads, finger tracing over the exclamation points at the end of the line. The dormitories are silent even though it's only midnight, and Felix knows it's because Garreg Mach isn't the same as it was all those months ago.</p><p>Although he has a number of questions regarding this library that Annette wants to blow up, he leaves the thought aside when he hears voices outside his room. Loud, angry voices— all belonging to his friends, all yelling about things they were too blind to see until now. He grabs his sword, keeps Annette's book face-down on his satchel, and tells himself that he'll get back to it later.</p><p><br/>
</p><p>♪</p><p><br/>
</p><p>(He'll get back to it later.)</p><p><br/>
</p><p>♪</p><p><br/>
</p><p>Now, as the fire beside him spits out the last of its embers and dies out, Felix looks up at the brightening sky, then down at Annette's notebook. Its edges aren't as smooth as they were back then, but the drawing on its cover remains the same as he runs his thumb over it. He recalls the Blue Lions’ classroom, and how he doesn’t know if all of the classmates — <em>friends</em> — he spent time with in there are still alive anymore. </p><p>He recalls the spot where he found this book, the way Annette sang to bright orange flowers in the greenhouse, and how he never got to speak to Byleth about returning lost items after that. It isn't the first time he's stayed up all night because of Annette's songs, and somehow, he knows it won't be the last either. </p><p>He stretches his arms above his head, gets up, dusts himself off, places her notebook back in his bindle, and puts out the fire. Then, with one wary glance back at Faerghus as he thinks of all those faces he hasn’t seen in years, and this voice he hasn’t heard in years, he sets out for the monastery.</p><p>Although he'd spent everything in him to look for Dimitri, Felix knows, of everyone in the Blue Lions, she's the one who never, ever left his mind.</p><p><br/>
</p><p>♪</p><p><br/>
</p><p>Well. Their reunion is so disastrous that even Felix cringes at the state of affairs.</p><p>Dimitri, though alive, isn't the sanest in their group, and Byleth, who shouldn't have survived that day, resurfaces looking so... otherworldly, almost, that it makes Felix raise his hackles. Adding his father into the mix, along with all the others who have so much baggage to unpack, Felix just about loses it one day.</p><p>Kicking a stray block of rubble outside the gazebo, Felix swears under his breath. This place doesn't feel the same way it did back then, and he isn't sure if it ever will. The boar has finally revealed his fangs, Sylvain and Ingrid are as insufferable as ever, the others feel like completely different people, but the only thing that's still the same — he stops kicking and straightens up — is <em>this</em>.</p><p>"A flash and then a big boom!" Annette chirps at a Wirehair, which seems as enraptured by Annette as Felix is, watching her hair sparkle in the afternoon light. "A... flash and then a big boom?"</p><p>Her unsure mumble makes him smile, as does the memory of the part that she'd tried so desperately to come up with after this line. As he sees her lean back in her seat, trying to recollect the right way to sing that song, he thinks of all the lyrics that could have been great follow-ups, and how harsh the lines she'd drawn over those to cut them out were.</p><p>She keeps at it as she reaches forward to stroke the cat's head, varying her pitch as she repeats the same line over and over, trying to make it sound best.</p><p>"Man, I give up," she huffs, a dozen tries later. "Guess this was a one-hit song, little guy."</p><p>"Was it?" Felix asks, not without concern. "I thought it—"</p><p>"GAH!" Annette exclaims, startling the cat so much that it jumps off the table. "<em>Felix</em>. You need to stop appearing out of nowhere when I'm sing—" She stops herself, then clears her throat. "When I'm preoccupied with other matters."</p><p>"Like singing to felines?"</p><p>"Exactly," she says, clearly having missed what Felix just said. "Like singing to— oh. Oh no, you heard me again, didn't you?"</p><p>Laughing, Felix takes a seat opposite her. He remembers when this garden was teeming with students and teachers alike, their teatime conversations mundane yet... not bad, now that Felix thinks about it. Despite everything, he'd still take talking about strange fish in the pond over a deranged boar and this war with the Empire.</p><p>He turns back to her, sees her distressing over how she's been embarrassing herself in front of Felix since forever now. Felix wants to tell her that she's the only thing that's holding him back from simply closing his ears and screaming as loud as he can, but settles for quietly swallowing the lump in his throat instead.</p><p>"I'm sure you've been making fun of me all this time..." Annette says, burying her face in her hands.</p><p>"I really haven't," Felix says, frowning at her. "I mean, I told you as much last time."</p><p>"Sure, Felix. Like you really wanted to hear about steaks and cakes."</p><p>Felix doesn't know what to focus on. The fact that she still thinks he's a... what was it— an ultravillain of sorts, or that she knew exactly what he meant by <em>last time</em>, even though that was five years ago.</p><p>He doesn't know what to focus on, so he doesn't. Simply says, "I really did want to hear about them... and, well. I still do."</p><p>Annette doesn't say a word nor stir. She goes completely still, like that day Felix first found her notebook. It's nostalgic yet not, and he finds himself reaching out to brush her bangs out of her face before he knows what he's doing.</p><p>"Can you sing that one more time, Annette?" Felix asks. The tips of his fingers tingle, as does the rest of his body. This is the most vulnerable he's been in years, and somehow, he doesn't hate himself for it.</p><p>"I..." Annette begins, colour rising to her cheeks when she glances at Felix's hand, now resting atop the table. "Well. I guess I could? If you promise you won't laugh at what comes next."</p><p>"I swear it," Felix replies, thinking back to her notebook inside his bag, and how he knows the words to every song she's ever sung. "I won't make a sound."</p><p><br/>
</p><p>♪</p><p><br/>
</p><p>Soon after, when Dedue returns to their ranks and takes his place beside Dimitri, Felix steps back into the empty Cardinal's room after their first war council with him in their midst, places his palms on the table, and heaves a sigh of relief. He really did care for that man a lot more than he realized.</p><p>He sinks into his usual chair and glances around the room— a spare eyepatch placed where Dimitri sits, Byleth's folded schedule now flipped over and used to take down last-minute notes, the empty plate of pastries Mercedes had brought for them, the knight's tale Ashe must have borrowed from the library again. There's a box of chocolates at Sylvain's spot — which must be a gift from some monk who doesn't know better — and a little hair clip near Ingrid's notes.</p><p>They're all here. They're all <em>here</em> right now, but Felix knows that it won't stay that way for long. This is a <em>war</em> they're in the middle of. It's a wonder they haven't had any casualties so far, but Felix knows better than to draw comfort from that. The same weapons that claimed his brother can take away anyone who was in here only minutes ago, and it terrifies him.</p><p>He closes his eyes, then digs the heels of his hands into them for good measure. He remembers Manuela talking about panic attacks during one of her recent seminars, but Felix hadn't really paid enough attention to remember what one had to do when it felt like they were drowning. He’s drowning, and he never learned how to swim.</p><p>"Felix?" Annette — of course, Annette — says, then, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Hey, are you alright?"</p><p>"What?" He blinks up at her, sees phosphenes that obscure her face. "Sorry, yeah, I'm okay."</p><p>"You don't sound okay," she says, pressing the back of her hand to his forehead, checking for a fever. He makes a sound but doesn't draw back, and she doesn't need him to tell her that this isn’t a fever, but something... different, something Felix can't explain.</p><p>Annette doesn't say a word, only watches Felix blinking the haze away. It's easier to do it when he knows what he's looking at, when it isn't an empty room that seems like it's going to remain that way before him.</p><p>They don't say a word, and it takes more than a few minutes, but Felix feels like he can breathe again.</p><p>"Listen, Annette," Felix says, gesturing to the chair next to him. "Here, take a seat."</p><p>Annette sits, and Felix turns to her again. They're all here now. <em>She's</em> here now. But one day, they might not be. She might not be.</p><p>Annette blinks at him, and all he can do is gaze at her with all these feelings he can't express. Softly, he says, "I... have something to give you."</p><p>"Something to give me?"</p><p>"If—" Felix sighs. "If you promise you won't call me a villain and run off again."</p><p>Without waiting for her response, Felix reaches into his bag and pulls out Annette's notebook. He smiles down at it fondly, heart thudding in his chest at the knowledge of what he’s doing right now, then schools his expression back as he looks away and holds it out to her. "Here."</p><p>She stares down at it, and Felix thinks he's going to really be <em>hated forever</em> this time. “<em>That—</em> That’s—”</p><p>
  <a href="https://twitter.com/zeeohyi"></a>
</p><p>But he doesn't get slapped or yelled at, like he'd envisioned so many times prior. Instead, he sees flushed cheeks and hair being tucked behind a ear, then the words: "Well, I guess it wasn't swallowed up by a parallel dimension, after all."</p><p>He snorts, and so does she, before bringing a hand up to stifle her laughter. She's been a lot kinder to him since their encounter in the gardens, then the greenhouse where Felix had been an absolute blushing <em>mess</em>, and it makes his heart skip a beat again, like he's seventeen and watching her wolf down all that sorbet in the dining hall.</p><p>"So, which embarrassing song do you want to hear first?" she asks, flipping through the pages of her notebook with the same expression Felix wears when he polishes old blades.</p><p>“The one about the pegasus-wyvern feud,” Felix replies, placing an elbow on the table. Then, when he cups his chin and kicks the leg of her chair enough times that she looks up, he says, “After that… all of them. In order.”</p><p>Annette smiles, and Felix doesn’t miss the red tinting the tips of her ears. It causes his entire body to tingle again, and it’s a wonder he hasn’t burst into flames already. She holds up the book to cover her face, and the speaking cake that says <em>yum</em> has never looked nicer to him.</p><p>“That’s why I said ‘first’,” Annette whispers, voice muffled by the pages of her notebook as she kicks Felix’s chair in turn. </p><p>She’s here now, but one day, she might not be. Still, Felix doesn’t let his mind wander there; simply closes his eyes when she sings, and leans in.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <a href="https://twitter.com/zeeohyi/status/1301163501575180291">EVERYBODY SAY THANK YOU ZOE</a>
</p><p>i'm on <a href="https://twitter.com/sharrkans">twitter</a>!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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